Sales leads may be generated through various ways of contacting potential customers. For example, salespersons may mail, e-mail or cold call persons meeting certain demographic criteria to prospect for potential customers. Salespersons may also go door-to-door to generate sales leads and develop marketplace data through direct contact with potential customers.
The home improvement industry, in particular, often relies on neighborhood canvassing to generate sales since visiting a home can provide useful information regarding what types of products the occupant may be interested in. Typically, when canvassing an area, a sales team will divide up the area into multiple geographic regions, and send one or more representatives to canvass each region. The marketing representative may go door-to-door down each street in their region until each house has been visited. To keep track of which homes have been visited and what the outcome of the visit was, the marketing representative may take notes, fill out standardized forms, or simply rely on their memory and report the results when they return to the main office.
Typically, in a portion of the homes visited or otherwise contacted, the occupant will either not be home, or will be unwilling to talk to the marketing representative. In cases where the homeowner is not home, the marketing representative or some other member of the sales team may wish to revisit or contact the home at a later time. However, to avoid annoying potential customers and wasting manpower on unproductive visits, it is important to distinguish visited homes where the homeowner was not present from those in which the homeowner was present, but showed a lack of interest in the product. In addition, when the homeowner does show interest, it is important to capture any useful information regarding the potential customer. This information may include products desired and details about the home, such as the general condition of the home, the types of materials from which the home is constructed, or a component of the home that appears to need replacing.
Typically, in order to keep track of which homes have been visited or otherwise contacted, and the outcome of the visit or contact, the marketing representatives will use paper to track their contacts. This paperwork will be turned in at the end of the day, and used to generate a file of market information and sales leads. However, the files are often not well organized or made readily available to sales associates. In particular, salespersons may fail to keep track of homes where there was no answer to reduce their paperwork burden. This may result in lost sales due to leads that are not followed up on in a timely manner and wasteful re-canvassing of neighborhoods and homes that were previously visited.
Therefore, there is a need for improved systems and methods of obtaining and disseminating marketing and sales information in the sales industry.